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Colville

duggledog

Winston’s party needs to get rid of Winston. Without him they could poll much higher.

A party that cracks down on crime, stops immigration from third world countries, stops the DPB after the first child born out of wedlock and rids us of the Maori seats & other nonsense gets my party vote.

It’s time for NZ First to implement its succession plan. The party needs to announce that Winston is no longer able to represent Northland, and confirm Shane Jones as its 2017 candidate. Once Jones enters Parliament he will become Deputy Leader, and ultimately Winston’s successor when the Old Age Pensioner from St Mary’s Bay is given a plum but meaningless diplomatic posting.

NZF must confront the elephant in the room soon. Winston Peters c2016 is not the same elegant young man who formed the party 23 years ago. Father Time, late nights, fags and whisky have taken their toll, and Winston now is a shadow of his former self, and almost a figure of fun. His best-by date has come and gone, and he looks increasingly jaded and shop-soiled. The sooner Peters is replaced, the sooner we will see whether NZF can stand on its own two feet. I believe it has a far better chance of doing that under Jones’ leadership than that of the unlikeable Ron Mark.

duggledog

National are completely exposed on the right. Where exactly is the centre anyway? Is it the vast majority of voters who don’t really think past the end of the pay packet next week? Do we really engineer our country’s future for people who think about politics once every three years for five minutes?

I think economically you could argue we are going in the right direction however as far as crime and the social indicators as I’ve listed above we’re not.

If National were a centre right, conservative party then Paula Bennet would articulate today that she has no answers and no sympathy for the woman with eight children who’s been kicked out of HNZ housing due to P use / manufacture.

+++++
Absolutely Nos-NZ.
It is the art of the possible,. but …..
I would just like to kick some back sides, and have Ministers/MPs listern to Joe Public rather more than “But you must be seen to be doing something, Minister” bureaucrats.

Than

It’s encouraging to see NZ First down 3%. Hopefully the start of a trend and they’ll fail to reach the threshold again in 2017.

But sadly it’s looking all too possible Winston Peters will get to play kingmaker. Assuming the drops for both the Greens and MP went to Labour, and similarly the drops for ACT and the Conservatives went to National, this suggests that of the 3% NZ First lost 2% of it went to National, 0.5% went to Labour. If this is any indication of the mood of NZ First voters Peters would be taking a huge risk supporting a Labour-led government.

G152

Scott1

I think In NZ there may be quite a few social conservatives but NZ doesn’t have that ‘redneck’ base that will just say F U to the media and intellectual elites. If the media turns on a conservative party NZders will abandon it, and it will collapse.

This is why in NZ you need someone like Winston who is bigger than the party so these people can say they support him but not come right out and say they are truly a nationalist/conservative and so he can be conservative when he needs to be and not conservative when he needs to back off the ideology and avoid too bad a backlash. And sometimes he can just hold up a “NO” sign and try to confuse everyone.

Scott1

G152,
Yeah but you would be lying to them. If push comes to shove Winston will almost certainly go with national because national can give him more baubles and that’s the bottom line for a election negotiation with NZfirst.

Colville

duggledog

National can just keep moving left and squishing Liarbore and the Gweens together. Neither of those parties can announce policy to the right of National so National just drags in more voters. Thanks MMP.

In 15 months time when we are getting to the pointy end of things again we will have the choice of Key to lead or a rabble of Lefties led by the angry incompetent unionist. I know where I will be voting.

macdee

National are completely exposed on the right. Where exactly is the centre anyway?

They may well be “exposed on the right” duggledog, but it’s not the votes of people from the far Right like Redbaiter and Kev who win you elections. Nor is it the votes of the people on the extreme Left, like Bradbury, Bradford and Bright.

When Key took over from Brash prior to the 2008 election Labour didn’t take him seriously because they thought (wrongly) he was a political lightweight. They still think that, and until they are prepared to acknowledge that Key has completely out-manouvered them in the centre (where elections are won and lost), Labour is doomed to keep on failing. And that is absolutely fine by me.

SGA

pdm

I believe ACT has a huge opportunity in the 2017 election. However I am not sure they have the structure through the country to take advantage of it.

Using Hawkes Bay as an example when ACT was formed part of its core came from the Grasshopper (my recollection of the name) group which was based in Hawkes Bay. I am in Hastings and as far as I am aware that group has disintegrated over time. I don’t think David Seymour has either the time or the gravitas to rebuild that base.

RalphT

hmmokrightitis

KS, perfectly put, and long may the left continue to think Key is a lightweight and that the electorate will one day wake up from their deluded sleep walking. It really is a winning strategy.

As is the constant bleating about the “housing crisis” and the fact that inequality is rising. By all fact based measures inequality is not rising, and the most important measure of all, perception, its probably not from all the discussions I have, particularly with charities. As for housing crisis, there’s way more to the country than Auckland. The rest of us will leave you to sort that out with your council 🙂

cmm

I’ve said this before and will no doubt say this again.

Talking up NZF is just a protest. It is far less likely that people will vote for NZF in an actual election. People like the amusement factor of Winnie, but they don’t want to give him the keys to the castle.

Sure, they will vote NZF in a by election when he won’t swing the balance of power, but that’s very different to voting for them during an actual election.

RalphT

But cmm there is a solid core of voters who worship the water that Winnie walks on. While he may go from 8 to 12% and then down again, there is, sadly, a group who will never dessert him; in the mmp age there has only been one election (2008) where he failed to get the magic 5%. Even if he sheds half his support from now until next November he is likely to be in the position of king maker. While the best result would see NZF get 4.9% (and lose Northland) that is by no means certain.

Michael

NZ First will only want to dance with National after the election, it won’t want to govern with the Greens as part of Government. So National have a lot of power in post election negotiations with NZ First.

And anyone who thinks Winston won’t be around in 2017 is deluded. He may lose Northland, but he’ll be well over the 5% threshold unless there is some charismatic and intelligent Labour Leader yet to emerge.

If you are a low income person in any of our major city’s the possibility of affording your own house is remote.
I brought my first home many years ago and went without luxury’s had flat mates etc and struggled for a few years .
They used to think I was antisocial because Friday beers I would have one then leave… It was all my budget could support.
With the cost of a home compared to income nowadays even living like a monk would be any where near not enough .

tvb

Every 10 years or NZF finds itself in this position. Presumably this will be the last time Winston will do this. In a parliamentary career lasting almost 40 years Winston has been a Minister for about 7 in 3 governments. All Ministerial careers ended in failure. Not much to say for it.

hmmokrightitis

Youll forgive me if I don’t sully myself by going to that particular site griff. Hickey is a twat of the first water. I still piss myself laughing about his “property collapse, 40% drop in prices” bull shit of a few years back. He talks out his arse.

I did the same with my first house. Paid $110K for it. Gave up drinking, eating at restaurants, home cooking that lasted for days. Lived hard. And that’s still feasible today, in places all around the country. Problem is people still want a ‘lifestyle’ and a mortgage. Take your pick.

hmmokrightitis
The point is the ratio has gone from 2x to 6x more in our major city’s.
That is where the work is .
This can be confirmed by multiple sources .
It was hard but doable at 2x with sacrifice.
At 6 x it is impossible.

David Garrett

This is a very difficult comment for me to write…

Whether we like it or not, Peters is – still – something of a phenomenon, and he will be until his lifestyle catches up with him and he drops dead. Rodney Hide admitted to me that he could never have “got” Peters in 2007 on his lying about taking money if Peters had been at the height of his powers. At an election forum in Tauranga in 2008 I – a complete political neophyte – made a fool of Peters. I pulled a stunt on him at the meeting, and the crowd booed him – a crowd in an electorate he had once held for years. Unsurprisingly, NZF failed to get 5% at the subsequent election and were consigned to oblivion.

I began to realise what influence Peters had in 2009 when we were promoting 3S and trying to build public support for it. I was speaking to every service club and lobby group I could get invited to. We could get a slot at every Rotary and Probus Club in the country. Despite the most stringent of efforts, we could only persuade ONE Grey Power group in the whole country to invite me to speak on a policy you would think their members loved. Why? Very simple – Rodney had killed their hero.

Except he hadn’t! Peters performed the seemingly impossible, and got back in 2011. No political pundit thought he could do it. Having done that, he took Northland against all predictions, and made Steven Joyce – then the acknowledged guru on organizing political campaigns – look like a fool. There is no doubt that Peters, well past his best as he is, remains a formidable force. Now he is acknowledged – albeit a century in political time away from the next election – as the kingmaker in 2017. Much as it pains me grievously to say it, he shares some of the political ability of his namesake, the man who not only led Britain to victory when everyone had written them off, but came back again in 1951 at over 70 years of age.

David Seymour…a man who has built the grudging respect of the Press Gallery but alienated many stalwarts of the ACT party. He has just written off the law and order faction of ACT – a very sizeable percentage of the membership and voters – with his stance on the Moko issue. While Jacinda Ardern FFS put out a statement on the plea bargain deal that Garth McVicar could have written, Seymour decided – based on advice from God knows who – that the plea deal was perfectly OK.

Now Amy Adams has announced an enquiry into the deal…for political reasons to be sure, but she has read the widespread mood of public disgust and dissatisfaction – an understatement if ever there was one – with the still unexplained and seemingly inexplicable decision to downgrade the charges against Moko’s murderers from murder to manslaughter.

Law and Order has never been Seymour’s “thing”…it wasn’t Richard Prebble’s either, but every election time he held his nose and said the necessary things to the many ACT supporters for whom the party’s law and order policies were the main reason they gave ACT their vote. In one fell swoop – and for the very poorest of reasons – Seymour has just blown those supporters away.

In Rotorua on 27 June I may well find myself in the invidious position of having to stand with Ron Mark and NZF and agree with what they say about Moko’s killers getting the inevitably grossly inadequate sentence. It won’t be an easy day.

hmmokrightitis

Then people have to adapt Griff. I did 10 years offshore and saved hard during that time, what’s wrong with doing that – or maybe even if people lower their expectations. And I do not accept that there is no work outside of the main centres. So, you’re telling me outside of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, there’s no work? Really?

It might be a problem in Auckland and soon Hamilton and Tauranga, and many NZ’ers are coming home from Australia, but the reality is that if you want it you find a way. No, you might not be able to buy an $800,000 home on a $65,000 salary, so you make choices that prioritise what’s important to you, where you live and what you do for a crust. Well, some of us do.

Nostalgia-NZ

Bill English is, as far as I know, the first NZ Minister of Finance to look at the outcomes of spending that have traditionally burgeoned into a great volume of waste (social and financial) later in the lives of some young NZers and their families. The net benefits of success in this area benefit all NZers in a number of areas, less crime, social welfare, insurance, but increasing health benefits, personal safety, productivity and so on. That’s the middle ground that has taken generations to analyse, or more to the point, attract the attention of a current Finance Minister. No other party gets near that just well worn phrases, though credit to Twyford on Auckland housing.

David, you are right about ACT and law & order. I first joined ACT because of Muriel Newman and her support of fathers issues. ACT’s law and order policy was a factor in me bring keen on ACT.

ACT’s make law and order policy is about property crime rather violent crime and sexual offending.

NZF is now the party with the strongest law and order policies. I think Judith Collins did a good job as MoJ and is probably good as Minister of Police but I was very disappointed with her support for the whitewash report about Corrections handling or Blessie’s evil murderer.

Have you got a source on Seymour’s support of Moko’s plea bargain please?

tvb

The law and order section of Act did not amount to much. It’s approach to criminal justice issues was superficial and reactionary. This is at odds with its thoughtful approach to other public policy issues.

Kimbo

@ David Garrett

OK, I’ll have a go.

Well done on you efforts on the 3S law. However…

…if you were a NZ First MP, especially (they are, after all, an unashamed populist party), you could have done the same – hence the possibility of you now marching alongside Ron Mark. At election time nearly all political parties, with the exception of the Greens, talk tough on ‘Laura Norder’. For that reason, and as ACT would be competing for the same (in many cases emotively-driven) vote, they are probably better to concentrate on what is their indisputable point of difference – free market principles. And I’m sure you will appreciate that “core principles” is not the same as “point of difference”.

The proof is likely in the pudding as, despite your work with the 3S bill, nonetheless ACT’s share of the vote fell during the general period you mentioned. Obviously there were other issues at the time affecting the ACT vote, including the killer of perceived disunity in the party. However, as ACT is the free market party, and law and order is not distinct to them, then in the interests of actually growing their core voter base to the previous levels of around 5%, instead of relying on the perpetual and eventually unsustainable life-support of winning Epsom, Seymour’s move is defensible. In business you have to expand or eventually die, so at least ACT’s campaign strategy is faithful to the business principles they espouse, especially as it likely centres around brand differentiation. But as in all things in life, there are no guarantees…

David Garrett

tvb: You are talking out of your arse… The 3S policy and resulting law was the very opposite of “superficial” – and it is working much better than I had hoped, notwithstanding the five LWOP cases presently under appeal. At every party gathering I have ever attended a show of hands is asked for on the question of whether law and order should be major ACT policies. 90% of hands go up every time.

Kimbo: Wrong. Before my involvement with ACT McVicar and I tried to sell NZF on adopting 3S as a headline policy, and offered SST support. We got an imperious rejection from Ron Mark. Now I am told he is cursing himself. 3S could just as easily been identified with them.

I don’t know what you are talking about the ACT vote falling “during the general period [I] mentioned”. ACT went from two MP’s to five. At the 2008 election our two headline policies were three strikes and zero tolerance policing. As you say, the major cause of ACT’s decline was disunity and the Blonde Bimbo’s constant efforts to try and unseat Rodney – backed I am sad to say by my good friend Roger. Rodney’s disastrous trip and my equally – or more – disastrous downfull were the icing on the cake.

Chuck: Seymour’s text to me in which he loftily opined that the plea bargain decision was the right one.

@ Nostalgia (9.52am) – I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about English. I have seen/heard him speak a number of times at various gatherings, and even his strongest supporters will agree that he can be a bit dull.

But last year he spoke at a meeting I attended in Whanganui about the Government’s investment approach and it was like watching a different person altogether. He was animated, passionate, and very persuasive.

What National is doing across a number of policy areas is transformational. Instead of simply throwing out more money, English, Paula Bennett, Anne Tolley et al (and of course the PM) have looked at where the money is going, and how the most expensive of our dysfunctional families can be helped through targeted spending, not buckets of cash with no accountability. A huge amount of work has gone on behind the scenes identifying those who will have the greatest social cost in years to come, and whilst it will take time for results to become evident, the Government should be commended for what is both a visionary and revolutionary policy approach.

Dont forget Donna DG
Act lost sight of its core values.
As kimbo says a free market was its raison d’etre .
Populist policy like Three strikes and perk busting was not past of this instead it become a distraction.
Not that I am against three strikes DG I fully support such efforts to remove the incorrigible from society. Tough on crime was not part of the party’s core message and diluted the focus from party’s true purpose .
The party lost its way and showed it .
Under Seymour’s leadership it has refocused on its original purpose and hopefully will slowly build a core support among the true free market right .

Kimbo

@ David Garrett

Kimbo: Wrong. Before my involvement with ACT McVicar and I tried to sell NZF on adopting 3S as a headline policy, and offered SST support. We got an imperious rejection from Ron Mark. Now I am told he is cursing himself. 3S could just as easily been identified with them.

Likely because they understood that compared to “anti-immigration, anti-asset sales, cult-of-Winston” it gave them no brand differentiation. Essentially, they didn’t want the SST riding their coat tails. The ease with which NZ First now morph to include “law and order” after others have done the heavy-lifting illustrates the point.

I don’t know what you are talking about the ACT vote falling “during the general period [I] mentioned”. ACT went from two MP’s to five. At the 2008 election our two headline policies were three strikes and zero tolerance policing. As you say, the major cause of ACT’s decline was disunity and the Blonde Bimbo’s constant efforts to try and unseat Rodney – backed I am sad to say by my good friend Roger. Rodney’s disastrous trip and my equally – or more – disastrous downfull were the icing on the cake.

Umm, but they were still below the 5% threshold (3.65%) in 2008, still relying on Hide to win Epsom. That is not much of a place for a potential power broker/mover and shaker. Indeed, history shows parties in that position get thrown scraps by the major coalition partner – and get punished by their supporters at the next election for failing to deliver much. And likely much of the increase in 2008 from the abysmal 1.51% at 2005 was because:

1. there was a swing to the right in 2008

2. with Brash no longer leading National, ACT had a clear “free-market” brand-differentiation from National. Brash had almost killed off ACT in 2005 for no other reason than he was…Brash. Key’s disavowal of Roger Douglas on election night 2008, after the later had insisted in a previous interview that we needed to tough medicine of 1984 again in response to the GFC to avoid national economic catastrophe reinforced that choice.

The 3S bill may have been good for the SST, but not, IMHO, for ACT. Not in the long run, anyway. But your comments about “other issues” are likely the primary reasons for the decline in 2011.

David Garrett

Kimbo: That’s a pretty fair analysis…

As for 3S not being good for ACT, until recently focus groups consistently identified 3S as ACT’s major policy success. Charter schools may yet prove as good or better for them – things are looking very good in that regard now, and a focus on better education – the fence at the top of the cliff – fit well with 3S as the ambulance at the bottom…if you can follow my fairly tortured metaphor.

Kimbo

The ACT caucus was split over the leadership 3-2 during 2008-2011. Rodney Hide, DG and John Boscawen on one side favouring a “pragmatic approach” to increase ACT’s vote which had fallen from the halcyon days of 1996-2002 when they used to clear the 5% threshold under Richard Prebble’s leadership,

…with Roy and Douglas (trying to install a leader of his liking as he did when Lange was PM in 1988-89) on the other preaching “back to free market basics”. Rodney Hides’s “perk-busting” profile was viewed as a distraction. Indeed, in hindsight Douglas’ likely return to Parliament was with the intention to “clean up Dodge”, especially as he was the founder of the town in question!

And any party that has disunity, especially one with only 5 MPs deservedly gets punished by the electorate. How can you run a country when you can’t run your own caucus?

And any party that has disunity, especially one with only 5 MPs deservedly gets punished by the electorate. How can you run a country when you can’t run your own caucus?

Undoubtedly true. But some people had spent over twelve years, fighting five elections, to try to get ACT into government. And when ACT finally got there, those people had to sit and watch the party leader squandering it all by doing massive and possibly irreparable damage to our largest city. So it may be understandable that those people thought it was more important to get the party’s priorities right first, instead of just doing whatever would get the most votes in the next election.

deadrightkev

Winston’s party needs to disappear along with Winston. They are a group of ineffectuals that really have no idea what they stand for and how to deliver economic prosperity. NZ is never going to turn around with NZF, UF and the MP floating around between National and Labour.

National needs to be slapped hard by a new party on the right and dragged into major reform. If they don’t play ball then maybe Labour is a better option. Lets face it both of them are socialist.

Kimbo

Act owes its survival to Sir Roger Douglas but he got no thanks for his rescue mission in 2008. Once the party was into government Hide displayed very poor leadership or unifying ability. There were disgraceful bullying tactics within the board, divide and rule. Organization and development at the grass roots was shunned. For what reason he went that way we will never know I suspect. It was dumb. I suspect insecurity and psychological issues played a big part. He could have been deputy PM and Act could have been the third biggest party now.